The Palace is gone and Herla walks away, ignoring the urge to look back. The road in front of him is winding but clear, and he accepts that he must do what he always has—he moves forward. He travels with others for a while as they make their way through what was once consumed by brambles and is now simply just countryside.
He trades stories, narrating them with passion and excitement, for rides on horseback and nights sat in the back of carriages. It is by luck that Herla’s path crosses with that of the Theatre of Nightmares. He hears the music one night, and half-asleep forces himself to chase it.
He runs through the forest and perhaps for the first time notices he’s feeling less wooden. There’s still stiffness and aches but day by day it gets slightly easier. The Troupe is excited and relieved to see him. Sat round a campfire, Herla tells all: his theft; his attempt at election; the way his fate led to him pushing those around him away; that Fate is gone. There’s a weight lifted off Herla's shoulders, and in the hazy glow of the campfire he feels understood.
The Troupe agreed to help spread the word. Soon everyone will know that the Palace has crumbled and fate no longer binds them.
And then Herla leaves. He knows where he must go, and soon enough he finds himself in front of an office marked Ariadna in The Collegia. He feels far less wooden than before, no longer puppeted by strings: now the master of his own destiny.
Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door and Ariadna looks almost exactly as he remembered. Her dark circles are impossibly dark and face looks weathered by worry. There’s a moment of worry, a moment of doubt on whether it was right to come here, but Ariadna embraces him.
There’s apologies, and confessions, and hours of conversation. All is not solved: the relationship has left scars on both Herla and Ariadna too deep to be resolved in just one day. But Ariadna invites him to stay, to stay in Itascrius for at least a little while. Sometime in the future she will ask him “Should we try again?”, but for the present they sit in a comfortable silence.
The next time Herla travels it will not be because Fate ordained it but rather because he wants to.